settle down

S

settle down (idiom, phrasal verb)
/ˈsɛt.əl daʊn/

Meanings

• To begin living a quieter, more stable, or responsible life.
• To get married and start a family as part of a stable life. (Common usage)
• To start living permanently in one place.
• To calm down after being excited, nervous, or restless.
• To become steady or established in a job, relationship, or activity.
• To relax after physical or mental effort.

Synonyms: calm; relax; get married; stabilize; establish; quieten; compose; unwind.

Example Sentences

1. After years of traveling, he decided to settle down and live a peaceful life.
2. After dating for years, they decided to settle down and start a family.
3. They moved to the countryside to settle down in a quiet village.
4. The teacher asked the noisy class to settle down before the lesson began.
5. It took her a few months to settle down in the new company.
6. After the long hike, we all settled down on the grass to rest.

Origin and History

Settle down is primarily an idiom meaning “to adopt a steady, orderly domestic life,” often linked to marriage and establishing a home. Secondary senses include “to become calm/quiet,” “to assume a comfortable position,” and “to focus on a task.” Standard records show all of these senses.

Core Metaphor and How the Idiom Formed

The phrase fuses the broad Old English verb settle (“to place/establish, become fixed”) with the intensifying adverb down. Historically, settle already covered ideas of fixing oneself in place (residence, property, or decision), and down reinforces the notion of coming to rest. Etymological studies trace settle to Old English setlan and related Germanic roots.

When the Domestic Life Sense Emerges

The intransitive “married-couple / domestic establishment” sense of settle down dates to the early 19th century. Records place it “by 1835,” noting that settle alone in this family sense is attested earlier (1718). This aligns with period usage showing the phrase as a social milestone tied to marriage and home-making.

Earliest Printed Record

A mid-1830s British attestation appears in Charles Darwin’s Beagle diary material, where he writes of hoping to “settle down in life”—a formulation matching the domestic-life sense. For an openly viewable early instance explicitly linking the phrase to marriage, an 1845 Massachusetts legislative report on Lowell mill operatives states:

“After an absence of a few years… they depart for their homes, get married, settle down in life, and become the heads of families.”

Together, these show British usage in the 1830s and clear American usage by the mid-1840s.

Country of Origin

On balance, the idiom’s domestic-life sense appears to crystallize in Britain (attested in the 1830s, e.g., Darwin), with rapid adoption in the United States (well attested in the 1840s public documents). The phrase is treated as general English rather than a U.S. coinage, but early American civic and journalistic sources helped popularize the marriage-and-home nuance.

Companion Senses That Reinforced the Idiom

Parallel 18th–19th-century senses of settle—”to become calm/quiet,” “to fix/establish,” “to secure property by settlement,” and “to establish residence/colony”—created a semantic field where settle down naturally meant both “calm yourself” and “establish a settled household.” This polysemy likely smoothed the path to the modern domestic idiom.

Theories and Beliefs About the Idiom’s Growth

1. Domestic-ideology pathway (Victorian influence). Nineteenth-century Anglo-American ideals tying adulthood to marriage and household management (“heads of families”) likely promoted settle down as a social milestone verb.
2. Settlement/colonization imagery. The older “settlement/settler” sense (to establish residence, to found a settlement) provided a ready metaphor for “putting down roots” in one place—transferrable to family life.
3. Behavioral-calming crossover. The well-attested “calm down” sense operated in parallel, so urging someone to settle down could mean both “compose yourself” and “stop roaming”—conceptually aligning stability of mood with stability of life.

Representative Early Examples by Domain

• Personal/reflective (Britain, 1830s): Darwin’s diary phrasing “settle down in life” during/after the Beagle years.
• Public/civic (U.S., 1845): Lowell labor report: “get married, settle down in life, and become the heads of families.”
• Later popular culture (U.K./U.S., late 19th–early 20th c.): Songs and newspapers routinely link settle down with “find a wife/husband” and home-making, confirming the idiom’s mainstreaming.

Down, Marriage, Phrasal Verbs